escapade: n. a piece of daring or reckless behaviour. How many times have you been labelled as mad or reckless because you homeschool?
Well I say its time to break down those notions - Bring on the Madness !

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Friday, 28 February 2014

The girls decided that this year we would take at least one field trip a month rather than squeezing them all into the summer.We managed to get an unscheduled visit to MOSI (museum of science and industry - Manchester) this month where they had a great Steam, Sweat and Sewers exhibit - we learnt all about Manchester during the industrial revolution and got to play a bit of dress up.

Which tied in beautifully with our planned trip to York Castle Museum - here our local history group had arranged for an actor to discuss Victorian life with us.

Sunday, 23 February 2014

The girls wrapped up their botany this week by looking at photosynthesis and transpiration.We used our button leaf to recap photosynthesis and discussed how it all works.The younger two made a poster,

not sure how clearly it shows on the photo but they decided to stick some sugar to the leaf 'cause leaves are where the food is made' was their reasoning.

We discussed transpiration and dissected some stems to look for the xylem tubes. Rose decided they were the plants straws and stuck one on her poster to show the plant sucking up the water (blue ribbon)

and they decided to jazz up the transpiration experiment by using two different coloured liquids to see how that would effect the petal colour (some think we'll end up with purple and some think half blue and half red)

I'll let you know the outcome next week.I've decided to leave leaf shapes until there are actual leaves on the trees : )

Monday, 10 February 2014

We've started reviewing our botany this week - possibly a little early in the year but the girls were eager to begin.We reviewed the plant kingdom (more in this post), then focused on the difference between monocots and dicots - they carefully removed the petals and counted them and examined the leaf shape trying to work out which group they belonged too.

We then moved onto pollination using wotsits and sweets. (the wotsits leave a cheesy residue on your fingers when touched - like the pollen sticking to insects when they brush past heading for the nectar/sweets)

and used some great sorting cards from Montessori Print Shop to learn about the different types of pollination.

There were a couple of short films on youtube and brainpop they watched before writing it all up.